Finding Summer - Suzanne Halliday Page 0,217

they’re practically twins.”

Stan peered over his shoulder at the picture.

Arnie couldn’t believe his fingers trembled, but they did. He was having a hard time comprehending everything. Twins? A picture Dad carried for decades?

He studied the old Kodak print. It was folded to fit in a wallet and showed a chubby, blue-eyed baby girl holding her toes and smiling for the camera.

Arnie always knew he took after his mom. He scored big time when her DNA imprinted on him. His dad’s emotional reaction to seeing his granddaughter in person was very telling.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so shocked.” His dad sighed heavily. “Son,” he said in a somber voice. “Summer’s little girl is a big part of your mama’s legacy. I hope you’re ready to move this thing along because I’m about to unleash a metric shit ton of double-fisted grandparenting on Arianne. And you can expect a similar reaction from Darnell Senior.”

Arnie came back to earth with a thud when Stan’s bitter laughter brought a lot of things into focus.

“I know it’s fucked up, but after everything she’s done, I hope this part drives my mother nuts. She tried so hard over too many years to erase your mother’s memory, and I’m sorry for it,” he muttered. “I promise to be the best uncle ever.” He crossed his heart, fake spit into his palm, and held it out for a handshake.

He accepted the serious promise. Overcome by emotion, Arnie double pounded the area around his heart and shook Stan’s hand.

Happily munching a gigantic bear claw from a Ventura Boulevard coffee shop, Summer pushed Ari’s carriage away from the busy street and made her way through the cluster of neighborhoods making up the corner of Sherman Oaks where they lived.

She wheeled past a harried-looking postman and avoided a section of sidewalk covered in colorful rainbows.

“I love sidewalk chalk art,” she told a sleepy Arianne. “But it’s rude to walk on it.”

Cutting across the empty road, she went to the end of the suburban street, took a left followed by a quick right, and continued for another two blocks, arriving at last in the five hundred block of Wishing Star Lane.

There was a lot of negative about LA life, but if there was one solid positive, it was the basic north-south-east-west grid to the layout of the streets in the San Fernando Valley. A person had to be directionally challenged to get lost.

When she was still a block away from home, Summer noticed an erratically driven car zoom into her neighborhood and slammed on the brakes. She was too far away to see clearly, but a person exited the car, slammed the door, and stomped along a walk and into a house, leaving a cloud of anger resembling red dust pluming in their wake.

She considered crossing to the other side of the street to avoid the plume.

They waited at the cross street for a delivery truck to drive by and then strolled past Mrs. Pak’s house. Up ahead, she noticed Todd dashing from his front walk to Bud and Lynda’s house.

“Great,” she grumbled.

As she approached her destination, the sound of Todd knocking loudly on the Gerry’s door gave her a feeling of foreboding.

As she pushed the carriage into the driveway, her eyes went to the house next door, hoping Stan, Ned, or some workmen were around. She never liked talking to Todd and even less so when it was obvious something had him agitated. A few witnesses wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“What’s up, Todd?” she half yelled from the driveway to get his attention.

He stopped pounding on the door and whirled around to fix her with a fiery glare. His overall manner was shifty and tense. She wrapped her hands more firmly on the carriage handle.

“I need this like I need a rash,” she muttered tensely. Determined to shield the baby from his view, she pulled the visor down on the carriage’s bonnet.

Studying people was very much her thing, so when he pulled back to do a complete one-eighty in attitude, she knew he was putting on a show.

When he approached far too quickly for her liking, she placed her body between him and the carriage. If he creeped her out any harder, she might have to scream bloody murder for the hell of it.

“Hi, Summer.” He gestured with his thumb back at the house. “I was looking for Bud or Lynda.”

“They’re not home,” she informed him with a sotto voce delivery.

“Oh, well, uh, okay.”

“Can I help you?” she asked.

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